George Fenn - Adventures of Working Men. From the Notebook of a Working Surgeon

“All at once there came a terrible fear all over me – a feeling that I’ve never forgotten, nor never shall as long as I’m a sweep. It was as if all the blood in my body had run out and left me weak, and helpless, and faint, for down below I could hear a heavy beat-beat-beat noise, that I knew well enough, and up under me came a rush of hot smoke that nearly suffocated me right off; when I gave such a horrid shriek of fear as I’ve never forgot neither, for the sound of it frightened me worse.

“It didn’t sound like my voice at all, as I kept on shrieking, and groaning, and crying for help, too frightened to move, though I’ve often thought since as a little twisting on my part would have set me loose, to try and climb up again. But, bless you, no; I could do nothing but shout and cry, with the noise I made sounding hollow and stifly, and the heat and smoke coming up so as to nearly choke me over and over again.

“I knew fast enough now that I had come down a chimbley where there had been a clear fire, and now some one had put lumps of coal on, and been breaking them up; and in the fright I was in I could do nothing else but shout away till my voice got weak and wiry, and I coughed and wheezed for breath.

“But I hadn’t been crying for nothing, though; for soon I heard some one shout up the chimbley, and then came a deal of poking and noise, and the smoke and heat came curling up by me worse than ever, so that I thought it was all over with me, but at the same time came a whole lot of hot, bad-smelling steam; and then some one knocked at the bricks close by my head, and I heard a buzzing sound, when I gave a hoarse sort of cry, and then felt stupid and half asleep.

“By-and-by there was a terrible knocking and hammering close beside me, getting louder and louder every moment; and yet it didn’t seem to matter to me, for I hardly knew what was going on, though the voices came nearer and the noise plainer, and at last I’ve a bit of recollection of hearing some one say ‘Fetch brandy,’ and I wondered whether they meant Barkby, while I could feel the fresh air coming upon me. Then I seemed to waken up a bit, and see the daylight through a big hole, where there was ever so much rough broken bricks and mortar between me and the light; and next thing I recollect is lying upon a mattress, with a fine gentleman leaning over me, and holding my hand in his.

“‘Don’t,’ I says in a whisper; ‘It’s all sutty.’ Then I see him smile, and he asked me how I was.

“‘Oh, there ain’t no bones broke,’ I says; ‘only Barkby’ll half kill me.’

“‘What for?’ says another gentleman.

“‘Why, coming down the wrong chimbley,’ I says; and then, warming up a bit with my wrongs, ‘But ’twarn’t my fault,’ I says. ‘Who could tell t’other from which, when there warn’t no numbers nor nothink on ’em, and they was all alike, so as you didn’t know which to come down, and him a swearing acause you was so long? Where is he?’ I says in a whisper.

“One looked at t’other, and there was six or seven people about me; for I was lying on the mattress put on the floor close aside a great hole in the wall, and a heap o’ bricks and mortar.

“‘Who?’ says the first gent, who was a doctor.

“‘Why, Barkby,’ I says; ‘my guv’nor, who sent me up number seven’s chimbley.’

“‘Oh, he’s not here,’ says someone. ‘This ain’t number seven; this is number ten. Send to seven,’ he says.

“Then they began talking a bit; and I heard something said about ‘poor boy,’ and ‘fearful groans,’ and ‘horrid position;’ and they thought I didn’t hear ’em, for I’d got my eyes shut, meaning to sham Abram when Barkby came, for fear he should hurt me; but I needn’t have shammed, for I couldn’t neither stand nor sit up for a week arter; and I believe arter all, it’s that has had something to do with me being so husky-voiced.

“Old Barkby never hit me a stroke, and I believe arter all he was sorry for me; but a sweep’s is a queer life even now, though afore the act was passed some poor boys was used cruel, and more than one got stuck in a floo, to be pulled out dead.”

Plenty of you know Sheffield by name; but I think those who know it by nature are few and far between. If you tried to give me your impressions of the place, you would most likely begin to talk of a black, smoky town, full of forges, factories, and furnaces, with steam blasts hissing, and Nasmyth hammers thudding and thundering all day long. But there you would stop, although you were right as far as you went. Let me say a little more, speaking as one who knows the place, and tell you that it lies snugly embosomed in glorious hills, curving and sweeping between which are some of the loveliest vales in England. The town is in parts dingy enough, and there is more smoke than is pleasant; but don’t imagine that all Sheffield’s sons are toiling continually in a choking atmosphere. There is a class of men – a large class, and one that has attained to a not very enviable notoriety in Sheffield – I mean the grinders – whose task is performed under far different circumstances; and when I describe one wheel, I am only painting one of hundreds clustering round the busy town, ready to sharpen and polish the blades for which Sheffield has long been famed.

Through every vale there flows a stream, fed by lesser rivulets, making their way down little valleys rich in wood and dell. Wherever such a streamlet runs trickling over the rocks, or bubbling amongst the stones, water rights have been established, hundreds of years old; busy hands have formed dams, and the pent-up water is used for turning some huge water-wheel, which in its turn sets in motion ten, twenty, or thirty stones in the long shed beside it, the whole being known in the district as “a wheel.”

One of my favourite walks lay along by a tiny bubbling brook, overhung with trees, up past wheel after wheel, following the streamlet towards its head, higher up the gorge through which it ran – a vale where you might stand and fancy yourself miles from man and his busy doings, as you listened to the silvery tinkle of the water playing amidst the pebbles, the sweet twittering song of birds overhead, or the hum of bees busy amidst the catkins and the blossoms; watched the flashing of the bright water as the sun glistened and darted amidst the leaves, till on the breeze would come the “plash, plash,” of the water-wheel, and the faintly-heard harsh “chir-r-r-r” of blade upon grindstone, When, recollecting that man was bound to earn his bread in the sweat of his brow, one would leave the beauties around, and hurry on to some visit.

I had a patient who used to work in one of those pleasant little vales – a patient to whom it fell to my lot to render, next to life, almost one of the greatest services man can render to man.

He was genial and patient, handsome too, and I used to think what a fine manly looking fellow he must have been before he suffered from the dastardly outrage of which he was the victim.

He was very low spirited during the early part of his illness and he used to talk to me in a quiet patient way about the valley, and I was surprised to find how fond he was of nature and its beauties, some of the sentiments that came from his lips being far above what one would have expected from such a man.

My bill, I am sorry to say, was a very long one with him, but he laughed and said that he had been a long patient.

“Why Doctor,” he said one evening many many months after his accident, and when he had quite recovered, and as he spoke he took his wife’s hand, “I shouldn’t have found fault if it had been twice as much. I only wish it was, and I had the money to pay you that or four times as much. But you haven’t made a very handsome job of me: has he, Jenny?”